Remember the Morning
Page 7
That proved far from simple. Each day I was sent to a school with my two Van Vorst cousins, where young women were taught to read French, dance minuets, and serve tea—the three accomplishments a wealthy young New York female was expected to acquire before marriage. The school was run by a fat bustling Englishwoman named Madame Ardsley, who also devoted a good deal of time to scouring any and all traces of a New York accent from our vocabularies. New Yorkers were inclined to say “tree” instead of three and “dem” instead of them—a tribute to the numbers of Dutch in the city. We were all required to talk through our noses like highborn Englishwomen.
Clara, meanwhile, was toiling as a washerwoman below stairs, under the eyes of Fat Alice, the African who ran the house, along with her somewhat feckless husband, Thin Tom. Fat Alice and her daughter, Hester, who was her mother’s size, regarded Clara with undisguised dislike. My grandfather’s cook, Shirley, had told them about our comfortable life in his house and they had also heard about our stroll to the Bowling Green in our London-style gowns.
Fat Alice called Clara “the Princess” and gave her all the dirtiest jobs in the house—emptying the chamber pots each morning, scrubbing the floors, doing the heaps of wash that Aunt Gertrude, a fanatic about cleanliness like all Dutch vrouws,6 required each week. While Clara labored, she was subjected to a running chorus of abuse. “What was you doin’ for old Cornelius?” Fat Alice would ask. “He was too old to fuck. You do Indian dances with nothin’ but candlelight on your pretty little chocolate ass?”
“I did nothing. He was kind and good,” Clara said.
“How come he sired a son of a bitch like Master Johannes?” Fat Alice said.
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Van Vorst that question?” Clara said.
“You watch your tongue, girl. Or you’ll get de whippin’ of your life,” Fat Alice said.
Her daughter Hester overheard this exchange and told Aunt Gertrude that Clara called her husband a son of a bitch. Clara was locked in her basement room and deprived of dinner.
I could see that the situation was building toward an explosion. On Saturday afternoon, I went off to the Bowling Green and found Malcolm Stapleton talking to a broad-chested freckle-faced young man in a stylish blue coat and yellow waistcoat. He was introduced as Guert Cuyler.
“My God!” Mr. Cuyler exclaimed. “You’re far more lovely than this tongue-tied lout said you were. I’m honored to meet you, Miss Van Vorst.”
“Guert’s a direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant,” Malcolm said, winking at me. “He thinks you should have nothing to do with Robert Nicolls. If you fall in love with him, he’ll consider it treason.”
“I’m afraid I have a much more serious matter to discuss with you, Mr. Stapleton,” I said. I described Clara’s unhappy life in the Van Vorst household—and my own unpleasant one. I begged him to ask his father or someone else for help.
“I’ll talk to my father,” Malcolm promised. “I’m not sure what he can do. He’s involved in business with your uncle—”
“I’m studying law in my father’s office. I’ll speak to him,” Guert said.
“I have no money to pay a lawyer,” I said.
“There will be nothing to pay,” he said.
As they walked me back to my uncle’s house on Broad Street, Thin Tom came running toward us. “Help!” he cried. “Get a constable. The Indian Negar’s going to kill my mistress!”
We raced to the house, followed by a considerable crowd. Fat Alice and her daughter were screaming around the entrance hall and parlor. “What’s happened?” I asked.
“Your friend Clara’s got a carvin’ knife in her hand. She’s gonna kill my sweet momma!” Hester howled.
“What did you do to her, you fat bitch?” I screamed at Alice.
“She said she wouldn’t do der wash widdout somethin’ to eat,” Fat Alice said. “I called my mistress who come down to de basement with a cat7 in her hand. Dat Indian grabbed a knife and chased her upstairs and me and Hester wid her.”
Aunt Gertrude came downstairs with the cat still in her hand. She was blowing like a racehorse. She had obviously run all the way to the roof. “That creature will be punished at the public whipping post or my name is not Gertrude Van Vorst!” she cried.
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to give her something to eat?” I said.
In a passion, she raised the whip to lash me but Malcolm Stapleton caught her hand. “Calm down, Mrs. Van Vorst,” he said.
“I will not calm down! Who invited you into my house?”
“Your niece here.”
“She’s not entitled to such privileges.”
At this point Clara emerged from the basement with no sign of a knife in her hand. Almost simultaneously, Thin Tom appeared at the street door with a squat middle-aged man who wore a shoemaker’s leather apron around his thick waist.
“Constable8 Warner, I want this creature taken before a magistrate!” Aunt Gertrude said. “She’s threatened us with murder for no reason.”
“She threatened to whip me with that cat-o’-nine-tails. Isn’t that a reason?” Clara said.
“Madam Van Vorst,” Warner said. “I’ve got a business to run. It’s not a constable’s part to keep peace among quarreling females.”
“You’re paid out of the public purse, sir!” Gertrude Van Vorst cried. “I insist you take her to the jail and bring her before a magistrate in the morning. She’s a danger to every person in this house. Only a public whipping will change her ways.”
“Did you mean what you said about murdering?” Warner asked Clara.
“I meant every word. I’ll kill anyone who tries to whip me,” she said.
“Goddamn all,” Warner roared. He seized Clara by the arm and dragged her into the street. Pushing and prodding her ahead of him, he hurried her to a big stone building on the corner of Wall and Nassau streets, which she soon learned was New York’s City Hall. In front of it was a set of stocks, in which two disconsolate-looking whores sat, their arms and legs pinned in the holes, while a crowd of boys hurled jeers in their painted faces. Beside the stocks was a bright red post with manacles dangling from it.
“There’s where they’re going to cure you of murdering talk tomorrow,” Constable Warner said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you get twenty or thirty lashes.”
Downstairs in City Hall’s gloomy basement, a stumpy man wearing a dirty grey wig was eating a plate of oysters. He had crossed eyes, which struck fear into Clara’s soul. Was it a sign that he was in the service of the Evil Brother?
“What’s this, more thievery?” he asked Warner.
“Nothing of the sort, Sheriff,” Warner growled. “The piece belongs to Her High Mightiness Van Vorst. Says she wants to murder the lot of them. I was tempted to tell her to go to it.”
The cross-eyed man stood up and stretched. A dozen heavy keys clanked at his waist. “Old Staats is sitting tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll take good care of her. They killed one of his sons in 1712.”
He unlocked a heavy door and waved Clara along a narrow foul-smelling corridor, illuminated only by a single small window at the end of it. Halfway down, he unlocked another heavy door and shoved her into a cell that stank of piss and shit. A bucket, half full of the stuff, had obviously gone unemptied for a week. In the light from a dirty window Clara saw the floor was covered with a horde of roaches and other crawling creatures. There was neither a bed nor a chair. She would have to share the dirt-crusted floor with the insects.
“You got any money?” the sheriff asked.
“No.”
“You better find some if you want to eat anything.”9
He slammed the door and clumped back down the corridor to finish his oysters. Out of the silence a voice spoke from a cell on the other side of the corridor: “What’s your name, beautiful?”
“Clara.”
“Caesar over here. I’ll get you somethin’ to eat. What do you like? Oysters? Roast potatoes? Clams?”
“I don’t care.”
Clara was too miserable to reply. She huddled against the wall by the cell door, her head bowed on her knees. Perhaps death was better than this sort of life. If they beat her at the whipping post she would murder someone, preferably Gertrude Van Vorst, and let them hang her.
The cell door swung open. “Caesar says you can have some of his dinner,” the jailer said. “You want to risk it?”
Clara did not know why she should fear Caesar. She crossed the corridor to find herself facing a husky young African. He was as tall as a Seneca warrior, with a flashing smile and bold carefree eyes. He gave the jailer some gold coins and bowed Clara into his cell, which had a cot, blankets, and a chair and table. The floor was relatively clean and his slop bucket was empty.
On the table was a big plate of roasted clams, some ale, and plates of roasted potatoes and vegetables. Caesar grandly waved Clara to a seat. She was too disconsolate to eat much but Caesar did not let her gloom discourage him from enjoying a hearty meal. While he ate, he persuaded her to tell him why she was in jail. She described her persecution by Gertrude Van Vorst, Fat Alice, and her lying daughter, Hester.
“Fat Alice’s mad at the world because she’s so damn ugly she couldn’t get no one but that walkin’ skeleton, Thin Tom, to fuck her,” Caesar said. “She used to parade after me but I told her I’d rather do it with a sheep.”
“Do all the people of color hate me?” Clara said.
“Of course not. But they can’t stop talkin’ about you.”
“Why are you in jail?”
Caesar grinned. “If I told you that, you might blab it to the judge and Caesar would be dancin’ at the end of a rope the next day. Let’s just say they don’t like the way I get my hands on ready money.”
“What will they do to you?”
“Depends on the magistrate I draw. I might get forty or fifty lashes or maybe just a warnin’. I usually get a warnin’ because my master, old Johnny Vraack, can’t run his bakery without me. He’d starve without Caesar. So he puts in a plea to the magistrate not to damage his property. Since it’s all just talk and suspicion anyway, if the magistrate’s Dutch, he goes along. The Dutch hate English law and love to thumb their noses at it.”
“What if you get an English magistrate?”
“He may decide to inflict some damage, just to be on the safe side. But I been lashed before. It’s just another debit in Caesar’s book.”
“Debit?”
“A debt. A debt of honor.” Caesar drained the last of the ale and smiled mysteriously. He was a little drunk. “Someday Caesar’s goin’ to rule this town. I wasn’t named Caesar for no reason. It’s the name of a great general from long long ago, a man who was more powerful than this Jesus the whites are always talkin’ about. General Caesar hung Jesus from a cross, that’s how powerful he was.”
Caesar leaned across the table, his voice low, his eyes hooded. “There’s goin’ to be another war. The French and the Spanish are goin’ to attack New York from outside. Caesar will have an army inside. We’ll help them win the battle. We’ll pay back every one of the debits the whites owe us.”
Caesar leaped from the table and bounded around the cell, swinging an imaginary sword, slashing the shadows along the walls of the cell, spearing the empty ale bottle. “What a day that will be, beautiful. What a day—and what a night. We’ll burn their houses. It’s easy to do. You take a hot coal from the fireplace and carry it upstairs in a tin cup and stick it under the eaves. Four or five hours later, there’s a blaze! The whole town will burn. The whites will come screamin’ into the streets—where we’ll be waitin’ for them.”
He lunged, parried, slashed. Finally, breathless and sweaty, he bowed before her and declared: “Then we’ll make you the Queen of New York. Caesar’s wife.”
Was this man inspired or was he simply drunk? Before her grandmother banned rum from Shining Creek, the warriors often drank too much and made boastful speeches about killing all the whites in the world. But in the morning they were much quieter and more sensible. They listened mournfully to the sachem, Black Eagle, who had been to Quebec and New York and told them the white men were as numerous as the leaves on the trees and it would be impossible to kill them all.
Suddenly Caesar was leaning over her, a warm male smell coming from his black flesh. “Now, beautiful, it’s time to pay for your dinner.”
“You know I have no money.”
“There’s another way a pretty girl can pay.”
“I’m not a whore,” Clara said.
Caesar’s smile only grew wider. “All women are whores and all men are thieves,” he said. “Eventually you’ll sell your love to someone. Why not start with me, the prince of thieves?”
Clara shook her head. Caesar tried to pull her to her feet for a rough kiss. She sank her teeth into his shoulder and he let go with a howl of pain. She was sure she was going to get a beating but Caesar only rubbed his wound and glowered.
“You’re lucky you belong to Van Vorst,” Caesar said. “If it was anyone else, I’d spoil your pretty face for you. But he’s the sort who’d sue my master for damage to his property. If I ever cost Old Vraack real money, he’d let me hang the next time they caught me.”
“I want to go back to the other cell,” Clara said.
“Oh no. We’re goin’ to spend the night together. Maybe by mornin’ we’ll be friends.”
Clara crouched in a corner of the cell and Caesar talked about Africa. His father had been a great chief and he had led their tribe into battle against an enemy tribe on the other side of a tremendous river, ten times as wide as the Hudson. They had lost the battle and the enemy had crossed the river with his father’s body and seized their village. They had cooked his father over a bed of coals and eaten him in tribute to his bravery. They had let him eat some of his father’s flesh.
None of this surprised Clara. She had seen the Senecas eat the flesh of captive warriors after they had died bravely at the torture stake. It was the way warriors tried to steal the courage of their enemies. But Caesar’s story carried at its heart a different kind of pain. He told her of the long march to the shore of the ocean, where his mother and brothers and sisters and everyone else in his village were sold to white men on ships that brought them to America.
Clara asked him if Africa was like America. “No,” Caesar said. “Africa’s warm. No one freezes in the winter in Africa the way people do in New York. Every year poor people freeze to death here when they run out of wood.”
Caesar talked on about the wonders, the beauties, of Africa. The great river never thickened into ice. There was no snow in Africa, no north wind that whipped cold rain and colder sleet into a man’s face. The animals were beautiful. The horses had black and white stripes and there were animals even bigger than horses, with floppy ears and great long noses and teeth as long as swords. Africa was a loving mother and America was a harsh pitiless father.
“No one steals in Africa, no one lies and cheats. Women don’t sell their love for money. Men don’t own slaves and live off their labor. Everyone shares in the bounty of the land, the fish of the great river, the game of the forest.”
“I begin to think even if you become a king in America, you’ll still long for Africa,” Clara said.
“I’ll build a royal ship, a ship big enough for my whole army, and sail back to Africa. We’ll go up the great river to my old village and start a new tribe.”
Caesar was back to boasting again. Clara had watched her grandmother listen to bragging warriors and silently calculate how much truth there was in their oratory. Her calculation of Caesar’s truth was low. But there was something else loose in Caesar’s words—a sadness that Clara began to share for the first time. It was part of the new truth, the new self she was slowly discovering. She too was an exile in this white world.
What else did she sense, as Caes
ar prowled the dark cell, imagining himself as king of New York? Danger. There was danger and blood and death in Caesar’s words. Clara did not know how or where or when the danger would erupt, but she sensed it like heat from a flame. Caesar was like a spark blown into a dry forest, igniting a blaze that consumed everything and everyone, trees, animals, humans.
But the sadness slowly overwhelmed the danger as Caesar grew weary of the sound of his own voice. “Come on, my beautiful one. Make Caesar happy for a little while,” he whispered. “Let him make you happy. There’s so little happiness in this miserable world. Let’s make some here in the dark.”
As Caesar’s hands prowled her body, Clara found it more and more difficult to refuse him. Intertwined with the sadness and the smell of danger was a mad angry hope that connected to something deep inside her. She let him carry her to the cot and kiss her until the smell of desire oozed from his flesh and the blind wish to be filled, to be held, throbbed in her belly.
What came next was not happiness. In these moments, her grandmother had taught her that spirits should touch, the whole world should sigh and sing like a summer wind in leafy trees. Wherever Caesar’s spirit dwelt, it did not speak to her. Had slavery destroyed it? Was he only a talking machine that stole and baked and schemed? Would it be different, would there be joy and music, if she and Caesar were free?
TWO
CLARA WAS TWINED IN CAESAR’S ARMS when the sheriff awoke them with guffaws and leers. She felt ashamed and vowed she would never surrender that way again, especially when Caesar strutted and winked while the sheriff mocked her with stuff about Caesar having every black woman in New York thanks to his clever mouth and big cock.